What is Google Analytics? Google Analytics User Guide (2021)

If you:

• Don’t know what Google Analytics is or what GA is?
• Or have you never used Google Analytics for your Web site?
• Or have Google Analytics installed but never took advantage of its amazing features?

Then this article is for you.

Even if you haven’t heard of GA, don’t despair because there are still millions of Websites out there that haven’t exploited this versatile Website analytics tool.

But as soon as you know GA, quickly attach it to your Website as a strategic weapon for all your Online Marketing Campaigns.

This article will provide basic and condensed information for beginners to use Google Analytics, such as: What is Google Analytics? Why do you need to install Google Analytics? How to get it? How to use it? And how to solve common problems.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is one of Google’s free SEO tools. It allows creating detailed statistics about users when entering a Web page. Google Analytics also collects data about your Website’s digital presence.

Learn What is Google Analytics?

Contrary to some rumours, the platform is not limited to Web sites.

It will now track Android and iOS apps using the Google Analytics mobile SDK, and indeed any device connected using the Measurement Protocol, a feature that opens new worlds of possibilities. Internet.

How to use Google Analytics

To understand and effectively apply this Google Analytics analysis tool, you should follow the 4 steps below:

If you have successfully installed GA then you should also read this. Because there will be some notes for the installation that not everyone knows.

First, you need a Google Analytics account.

If you already own a Google account and use it for other services like Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google+ or YouTube. Then you should now set up Google Analytics with that Google account. Or you can create a separate new account to manage.

This should be a Google account that you use permanently, and only you have access to.

You can always give your Google Analytics access to people at any time. But NOTE you don’t want others to have full control over it.

Big Tips: Don’t let ANYONE (Website designer, Web developer, web host, SEO person, etc.) create your GA on Web account under their own Google account.

Because then, they will be able to “full control” of it.

The worse scenario is when the two sides no longer cooperate with each other. They will bring all your Google Analytics data with them, and you have to start all over again.

#1. Account settings and properties

Once you have a Google account, you can go to Google Analytics and click the Sign into Google Analytics button. After that, the interface will show 3 steps to follow to set up Google Analytics.

3 steps of GA setup introduced after login:

• Fill out the information for your own Website.

• After clicking the Sign-Up button, you must fill in the information of your Website.
• Fill out the information for your own Website.

Google Analytics often offers a hierarchy for organizing your accounts. From one Google account, you can set up up to 100 Google Analytics. You can set up up to 50 website properties in the same Google Analytics account. Besides, it is possible to set up 25 views in one website property.

Possible situations:

• situations 1: If you only have one Website, then you only need one Google Analytics account with one website property.

• situations 2: If you have two Websites, such as one for your business and one for personal use, you can create two accounts named “123Business” and “Personal”. You will then set up your business website in your “123Business” account and your personal Website in your “Personal” account.
• situations 3: If you have multiple businesses (less than 50) and each has its own Website, you can put them all in a Google Analytics account called “Business”. Then you set up a “Personal” account for your personal Website.
• situations 4: If you have many businesses and each business has dozens of websites (about over 50 Websites), you can set up an account for each business, such as 123Business, 124Business,,….

Choosing which of the 4 options above to set up a Google Analytics account depends on how you want to organize your websites. You can change the account name and properties.

#However:

You cannot move a property (Website) from one Google Analytics account to another. You’ll have to set that property up in your new account, and of course, you’ll have to start crawling all over again.

Suppose you already have a website and need to view (default, see all data). I would set up the following:

Account registration page when getting started

Here are the options to configure where your Google Analytics data can be shared.

You can choose where GA data is shared

#2. Install your tracking code

Once you’ve set up your Google, Analytics account, you’ll click the Get Tracking ID button. You will see a popup showing the Google Analytics terms and conditions pop up. And you need to agree to those terms and conditions. You will then receive your Google Analytics code.

Tracking code provided by Google Analytics

It is necessary to install the tracking code on each page of each of your websites. The installation will depend on the type of Website. For example, I created a WordPress site using the Genesis Framework. This framework has a specific area to add header and footer scripts to My Website.

You can enter the tracking code into the WordPress script and install google analytics for WordPress

Besides, if you use WordPress on your domain, you can use Google Analytics with Yoast plugin for easier code installation, no matter what theme or framework you are using.

If your Website is built using HTML files, you can add tracking code before the </head> tag of each of your pages. You can do this by using word processing programs (such as TextEdit on Mac, Notepad on Windows) and then uploading the file to the Web server using FTP clients (such as like FileZilla).

If your Website is built with HTML files, you can add tracking code before the </head> tag of each page.

#Note:

If you have an e-commerce store on Shopify, you will have to go into the Online Store settings and paste the tracking code in the specified place.

On Shopify, go to the Online Store settings and paste the tracking code in the specified place.

If you have a blog on Tumblr then all you need to do is visit the Blog. Click the Edit Theme button at the top right of the Blog. Then enter your Google Analytics ID in your settings.

Enter Google Analytics ID into Tumblr Blog

Through the above methods, you can see that the installation of Google Analytics depends on the platform you are using (content management system, Website builder, e-commerce software, …), as well as Themes and Plugins that you are using.

#3. Goal Setting

After you have installed the Website tracking code, you will have to set up a small (but not least important) setting in the Website Profile on Google Analytics. That’s your goal setting.

You can click on the Admin section at the top of your Google Analytics page. Then, click on the Goals section located in the View column.

Set goals for the Website

The Goals section will notify Google Analytics every time something important happens on your Website. For example, if you are attracting potential customers through contact forms on your Website, you will have to find (or create) a thank you page that will show up as soon as the visitor completes the form contact information.

Or, if you have a sales website, you will have to find (or create) a thank you page or a confirmation page. These pages will be displayed as soon as the visitor completes the purchase.

#Some small details:

These pages will typically have URLs like this:

http://123business.com/thank-you

http://123business.com/thank-you/

http://123business.com/thank-you.html

In Google Analytics, you will have to tap the New Goal button.

Click on NEW GOAL to create a new goal

You will choose the Customize. However, you do not need to do this if your Website already applies one of those options. Then, press the Next Step button

You will name your goal, select Destination and then click the Next Step button.

Choose the right goal for the Website

You will enter the URL of the thank you page or the confirmation page after the .com section of your Website in the Destination field, in the drop-down list located to the left of the Destination field, select “Begins with”.

Insert the URL you want to track in the Destination section and save it

Then, you click the OFF button of the value field and enter a specific value to convert (if any) and click Create Goal to complete the setup.

If you want to track the same goals or conversions on your page, you can repeat the steps above. You can create up to 20 goals on your Website.

#Other Notes:

Make sure the goals you create are really important to your business. These goals (for most businesses) include submitting a form to a potential customer, signing up to an email list, and completing a purchase order. Depending on the Website as well as its purpose, you can set different goals.

This is the simplest way to track conversions in Google Analytics. You can see more docs in Google Analytics support for more details on how to set up goal tracking.

#4. Set up site search

Another element that you can set up quickly but yield a lot of valuable data is Page Search. You can do this for Websites that have a search box, such as the search box at the top of the Moz Blog page.

First, run a search on your Website. Then keep this tab. You will see the URL (similar to the image below).

Go back to the Admin Menu in your Google Analytics account, and in the View column, click on View Settings.

Scroll down until you see the Site Search Setting section and switch it to On.

Look back at your URL in the search results. Enter the query parameter (usually s or q) and press Save. For example, on Moz, the query parameter will be q.

This allows Google Analytics to track any searches performed on your Website. As a result, you can learn more about what visitors are searching for on a particular page.

#5. Add additional accounts and properties

If you want to add a new Google Analytics account, you can return to the Admin panel. Click the drop-down list located in the Account column, then click the Create New Account link.

Similarly, if you want to add a new website to your Google Analytics account, you can also do this in the Admin Menu. Click the drop-down list in the Property column and click the Create New Property link.

Then you can continue with all the steps mentioned above. Once you’ve installed Google Analytics on one/more of your websites, set up your goals and found your pages, you should wait about 24 hours for Google Analytics to start receiving data. You can then view your data.

#6. View data in Google Analytics

Once you get your Google Analytics data, you can start learning about the traffic to your Website. Sign in to your Google Analytics account and view the Audience Overview report.

Besides, if there are many Websites, please select a website in your list of websites. Then, view that Website’s Audience Overview report. This is the first of more than 50 reports available in Google Analytics. You can also access other reports by clicking the Reporting link located at the top of the page.

#7. Standard reporting features

Most of the standard reports in Google Analytics will be similar to this. At the top right, you can click the drop-down arrow next to your Website to switch to other Websites located in your Google Analytics account. Or you can click the Home link at the top.

In the top right report, you can click the Date item to change the date range for which you need to see data. You can also check the Compare box to compare your data in different date ranges (such as this month versus last month) to see your data.

You can scroll over multiple areas of the Google Analytics report for more information. For example, in the Audience Overview section, you hover over the line above the chart, you will see the number of sessions on a particular day. Hover over the indicators below; the chart will tell you what each indicator means.

Below the key metrics are reports on the top 10 visitor languages, countries, cities, browsers, operating systems, service providers, and screen resolutions.

You can click the Report link on each section to see the full report. Or you can also click on any of the first 10 links to see details.

Eg

You can click on United States in the Countries section, and you’ll see the full Location report, focused on visitors from US states.

In this view, you can scroll over each state to see the number of visitors for each state. You can also scroll down the table and hover over each column name to see more of each metric.

You can also click on each state’s name to see visitors from cities within that state. Each time you see a clickable link or ? next to something, you can click or drag to learn more. The more you dig into the reports, the more useful information you get.

#8. Types of Google Analytics Reports

Here’s a summary of what you’ll find in each standard Google Analytics report section:

 Each section is a specific report or set of reports that you can refer to.

Audience reports (audience)

These reports will tell you all about your visitors. In there, you can see detailed reports on their age, gender (under Demographics), their common interests (under Interests), where they come from (Geo > Location), and the language they speak. Use (section Geo > Language), the frequency rate at which they access your Website (under the Behavior section) and the device they use to access your Website (under the Technology and Mobile section).

Acquisition reports (conversions)

These reports will give you information about what drives visitors to visit your Website (under All Traffic). You can see traffic broken down by main categories (All Traffic > Channels section) and specific sources (All Traffic > Source/Medium section).

Besides, you can also learn about traffic from social networks (Social section). You can connect Google Analytics to AdWords to learn more about PPC campaigns. Can also connect to Google Webmaster Tools/Search Console to learn more about search traffic (Search Engine Optimization)

Behavior Report 

These reports will tell you information about your content. Especially the first pages on your Website (Site Content > All Pages section), the top pages where users start a web surfing session on your Website (Site Content > Landing Pages section), and the top last pages that users visit. The user viewed during a visit and exit (section Site Content > Exit Pages).

If you set up site search, you can see what terms are searched for (Site Search > Search Terms) and what pages are displayed after a user searches (Site Search > Pages).

You can also learn more about your Website loading speed (Site Speed ​​section) as well as find specific Google suggestions to increase your Website loading speed (Site Speed ​​> Speed ​​Suggestions section).

#9. Convert

If you set up Goals in Google Analytics, you can see how many conversions your Website has received (under Goals > Overview) and random URLs (Goals > Goal URLs section). You can also see the path the visitor took to complete the conversion (Goals > Reverse Goal Path section).

Most of the tables in standard Google Analytics reports will link specific data to your conversions. Eg:

You can see the number of conversions made by visitors from California in the Audience > Geo > Location report.

You can also see the number of conversions made by visitors from Facebook in the Acquisitions > All Traffic > Source/Medium report section.

You can see the number of conversions made by visitors to your Website from specific pages in the Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages report.

If you have multiple goals, you can use the drop-down list at the top of the page to select which sections you want to see.

#10. Shortcuts and Emails

It may not be necessary to exhaust all the reports in Google Analytics, but you should explore them all. When you want to access a certain section more than once, use the Shortcut link located at the top of the report and add them to the Shortcut section in your left sidebar for faster access.

Or use the Email button to have Google Analytics email you (or others on the team) on a regular basis.

If you choose to email someone outside of your business, make sure they check their email regularly. Go back to the Admin menu and click the Scheduled Emails box in the View column to see who is receiving data in your Google Analytics.

FAQ about Google Analytics

Here are some frequently asked questions about Google Analytics and how to solve them

#1. How can I share Google Analytics data with others?

You do not need to provide Google account information nor access to your Google Analytics data to that person. You just need to go to the Admin menu, select the User Management menu of one of the three columns Account, Property (Website) or View.

From there, you can add the email addresses of the people you want to show them Google Analytics data and select the permissions you want to grant them.

#2. I have a lot of websites but I don’t want to check Google Analytics of each Website every day. So what should I do to solve the above problem?

You have 2 options as follows:

1. Go to the main screen of Google Analytics. You’ll see a list of all your websites and an overview of the top metrics, including sessions, average session length, bounce rate, and conversion rate.
2. You can also try some control panel solutions, such as Cyfe. For as little as $19/month, you can create unlimited dashboards with tons of widgets, including a wide selection of data from Google Analytics, from social networking sites, keyword rankings, numbers. Moz’s stats…

This solution saves you from having to spend too much time looking at broad-based analytics.

#3. Google Analytics reports that over 90% of my organic search keywords are reported as (not provided). So, where can I see that information?

(Not provided) is how Google protects user privacy. Google hides the keywords that users used in the search engine to access your Website. Tools like Google Search Console (free), Authority Lab sourcing reports (paid), and Hittail (paid) can help you discover those keywords.

They will not be linked to your conversions or other Google Analytics data. But at least you’ll have some more clues about what keywords users entered to find your site.

By now, you probably already know what Google Analytics is. Thank you for reading the whole article! Hope you will effectively apply the great features of GG Analytics that I have just shared to your Web Analytics.

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